We had a great travel day. No delays, no illness, problems. We flew nonstop from Chicago to Delhi. Fifteen hours, which is about the longest commercial airline flight around. Flew east and ended up going right over Moscow and then right over Kabul and over Pakistan as we came into Delhi. I was reflecting how small this world has become. Wake up in Michigan fly over Moscow and go to sleep in Delhi.

I took a picture of the in flight monitor when we went over, to prove that we really were over Afghanistan today.

In the plane I read a short history of India and then read two Economist articles about India. The history of India is long and varied and too long for a blog. Suffice it to say that the people are diverse and have many times been ruled by or invaded by foreign powers. The main point of the Economist articles was that India has it’s own form of capitalism… which features quite a few government owned companies and family owned conglomerates. The articles pointed out that starting and growing new companies in India is difficult and that this kind of growth has not been the main part of economic growth in India. I was surprised by that. I hope to learn more about this in coming weeks. Many of the companies we are interacting with in Hyderabad are smaller startups, so I am sure we will hear more about this.

Tomorrow we will learn about retailing and retail distribution in India. Domestic and foreing chain stores are battling with the mom and pop stores these days in India. It has turn political, with demostrations and the like.